Wail-block



H. R. STRAIGHT.

WALL BLOCK. I APPLICATION FILED AUG-'4, I916.

Patnted Oct. 14,1919.

6y fig,

bi ness:

: UNITED STATES PATENT, OFFICE.

HALVER R. STRAIGHT, OF ADEL, IOWA.

WALL-BLOCK. 7

To all whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, HALVER R. STRAIGHT, a citizen of the United States, and resident of Adel, in the county of Dallas and State of Iowa, have invented a certain new and useful WVall-Block, of which the following is a specification.

The object of my invention is to provide an improved hollow tile building block of such construction that it may be made by the use of dies and without hand work, and which when laid in a wall will prevent moisture from passing through the wall to the interior thereof even though the plaster between the blocks at places should fall out or become separated from the adjacent block.

A further object is to provide blocks of this character especially designed to be used at the corners of buildings and in connection with ordinary bricks, whereby the open ends of the tile at the corners maybe covered by said bricks, and whereby the outwardly and downwardly inclined blocks may coact with said bricks at the corners to produce a finished wall having the same appearance as a wall built of ordinary rectangular tile building blocks or bricks with 'smooth vertically arranged inner and outer surfaces, and my object is further in this connection to provide a building block of the character described which is reversiblein the wall so that either one of the outer surfaces of the building block may be selected for the outer or exposed surface of the wall.

My invention consists inzthe construction of the block and in the "arrangement and combination of said block with ordinary building bricks of rectangular form in the wall corners, whereby the objects contemplated are attained, as hereinafter more fully set forth, pointed out in my claim, and illustrated in the accompanying drawings, in which:

Figure 1 shows a perspective View of a wall having a corner therein constructed of my improved building blocks and embodying my invention.

Fig. 2 shows a sectional, perspective view of a part of a wall constructed by means of my improved building blocks, and

Fig. 3 shows a perspective view of one of my improved building blocks of the kind especially adapted for use at the corner of a wall.

Referring to the accompanying drawmgs,

and especially to the building blocks illus-.

outwardly,

andfouter faces of the block stand thickness because of the upwardly Specification of Letters Patent. Patented Oct, 14, 1919 Application filed August 14, 1916. Serial No. 114,740.

trated in Fig. 2, it will be seen that the building blocks are of the kind thatv may.

be made by the use of dies in the same manner as the ordinary rectangular tile are now being generally made.

Each block is formed hollow, there being a central partition 10, two large hollow openings 11 on opposite sides of the central partition, .two vertical partitions 12, and two h or1zontal openings 13 outside of the partitions 12. The inner and outer side faces of the block are indicated by the numeral l4, and are smooth and so arranged that they Wlll stand vertically when the block is laid up in a wall.

the inner face of the block downwardly and under surface of the block this longitudinal there being near the outer end 7 of the to-psurface a longitudinally arranged groove 15 and an uprlght rib 16. On the groove 15 appears adjacent to the inner surface of the block,

In the construction of the plain wall without any Icorners, a suitable base 17 v is first provided and a first. course of blocks is laid upon it, as shown in Fig. 2. The inner exactly vertical, but both'the top and bottom surfaces of the block incline from the inner face of the block downwardly and ;outwardly to the outer face thereof.

On top of the. first course of. building blocks I place two longitudinally arranged rows of mortar 18 and 19, which are spaced apart from each other. Then the next course of. blocks is placed on top of the rows of mortar so that there will be one rather thick layer of mortar in each of the grooves 15. However the exposed portions of the outer layer of mortar will be of only ordinary projecting ribs 16. It will be noted that those portions of each lowerblock which form mortar beds and support the larger part of the wall load are reinforced and braced by the partitions 12. y a

This arrangement tends to make it very easy for the bricklayer to quickly lay up a wall and to have all of the mortar joints in straight lines and of uniform thickness, because comparatively slight pressure on top of the building block at any point will suflice to press the block down until the exposed mortar joint is of just the right thickness and the blocks in the row are exactly horizontal.

It is well known that walls constructed of hollow tile blocks do not retain the mortar at the vertical joints as firmly and securely as at the horizontal joints, by reason of the fact that there is a rather restricted area of the blocks at the end, due to the openings in the blocks. In hollow tile walls, therefore, it sometimes occurs that the mortar at the vertical joints will either fall out or become slightly separated from the blocks, and when this occurs moisture or rain driven against the wall will pass through the vertical joints and flow on top of the next layer of hollow blocks below the point where the moisture or rain entered. In cases where the tops of the building blocks are horizontal, this moisture can flow to the interior of the wall just as readily as to the exterior, and frequently buildings have become defective by reason of the fact that walls of this kind, plastered and papered on the inside, will have moisture gather at the inner surface of the wall.

In order to overcome this difliculty I have provided a building block in which the upper and lower surfaces incline downwardly and outwardly all the way from the inner surface to the outer surface so that in case moisture should be driven through the vertical joints between the blocks and gather upon the top surf-aces of th blocks below, nevertheless all of this moisture will gradually flow toward the outer surface instead of the inner surface of the wall.

I am aware-that heretofore inventors have sought to overcome the difficulty mentioned by forming building blocks raised at the central portion and inclined downwardly in both directions. This, of course, is a step in advance over rectangular blocks, but in some instances the moisture may be driven to a point past the center of the block, whereupon with the construction described the moisture would then necessarily flow to the inner surface of the wall, which is objectionable. By the use of my improvement, however. walls have been constructed in which the inner surface of the wall may be plastered and papered with safety and without any danger of having moisture gather on the inner surface of the wall.

In the construction of a wall of this kind, of building blocks having the upper and flopicslof this patent may be obtained for five cents each, by addressing the Washington, D. 0.

trated in Figs. 1 and 3.

lower surfaces inclined down 'wardly and, outwardly and the outer and inner surfaces vertical, considerable difficulty was encoun tered in providing for the construction of corners and the closure of the open ends of the hollow tile building blocks at the corners. I have overcome this difficulty in a very simple and inexpensive manner by providing the groove and rib 16 near the outer edge of the top surface, and also by providing special corner hollow tile building blocks having one end of the rear upper surface. cut away at 20 in the manner illus- This is done by cutting away from the building block before it is dried and hardened, a substantially triangular piece, thus leaving one end of the upper surf-ace of the block with its top edge substantially horizontal, as shown at 21 in Fi g. 3, and this end is used adjacent to the corner of the building, as shown in Fig. 1, so that a rectangular brick 22 may be placed in the wall against the end of the building block to cover the open end of the tile. The edge 2-1 will then lie parallel with the top and adjacent corner of the brick, whereas the inclined part 20 will lie substantially parallel with the top surface of the adjacent building block, as shown at the point marked a in Fig. 1. This cutting away of the upper surface of the block may be done by the ordinary tile cuttino' machinery, and while it does to an ex- 23 tent weaken the block, the wall is not weakened because the solid bricks are interposed adjacent to each of these cut-away portions.

1 claim as my invention:

A wall structure comprising courses of hollow blocks laid end to end, each block having its faces parallel and vertical and its top and bottom inclined downwardly and outwardly, the blocks of each. course having alined grooves in their tops adj acent to their outer edges, and similar grooves in their bottoms adjacent to their inner edges, whereby spaced parallel rows of mortar may be laid on the upper surfaces of the blocks ofeach course to coactwith said grooves to thereby lock the courses from lateral movement relative to each other by the resulting compression on the mortar and to form a central longitudinal combined water shed and air space between the courses, each block having vertical load carrying partitions in line with the grooves therein.

Des Moines, Iowa, June 25, 1916.

HALVER R. STRAIGHT.

Commissioner of Patents, 

